


ink my name across your skin

by sospes



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Gen, Kink Meme, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 09:03:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sospes/pseuds/sospes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A picture says a thousand words. Bilbo's discovering that a tattoo says even more. Fili/Kili & gen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ink my name across your skin

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on _The Hobbit_ kink meme on LJ.

Hobbits, of course, don’t hold with tattoos. Nasty, unsightly things you can’t get rid of, more often the result of drunken foolishness than considered intent: young Oswald Proudfoot came home from an ill-advised trip across the Brandywine one summer with a giant bear of all things inked around his forearm, and found himself the subject of disdainful rumour for half a year or more. Hobbits are sensible folk, and there’s no sense in drawing on yourself: a sketchpad will do just as well, or a pictureframe on a parlour wall. 

As such, Bilbo is quite shocked the moment Dwalin walks through his front door, bald head tattooed to within an inch of its life, letters marked on his knuckles and patterns swirling across the backs of his hands. He’s far too polite to say anything, of course, and, to be honest, before long he’s too concerned with the way his pantry is being ruthlessly plundered than anything else: he’s overrun by dwarves wielding knives and dwarves brandishing spoons, and before long he’s tucked up in bed an listening to them sing of yearning and loneliness. 

Running after that rag-tag band of dwarves is the least appropriate thing he’s ever done as a Baggins of Bag End. It also feels like the best decision he’s ever made. 

Bilbo spends most of his first day with the company getting used to riding a pony. It’s not that he doesn’t like horses and ponies, no, not at all, they’re lovely creatures – only Myrtle doesn’t seem to care much what he wants her to do, and she wanders up and down the line, nosing at the other ponies and whickering softly whenever Bilbo awkwardly tugs at her makeshift reins. She eventually seems to settle on Dwalin’s pony, though, and so Bilbo spends the last few hours of that first day away from Bag End staring at the back of Dwalin’s inked head – and despite himself, despite his hobbit aesthetics and Baggins propriety, he’s fascinated. The markings are considered and skilled, repeating themselves until they disappear beneath his collar, and as they trot along into dusk Bilbo plucks up the courage to say, “Excuse me. Mr Dwalin?”

Dwalin looks back over his shoulder. “Aye?”

“I was wondering,” Bilbo stammers, “what do your tattoos mean? If you don’t mind telling me, of course. I don’t mean to be rude. Yes, well. Sorry.” 

Dwalin studies him for a moment, his pony’s reins wrapped around his hands. “I just like them,” he says gruffly, but there’s no aggression in his voice, no resentment. He turns back around, and before long they stop for the night. 

It’s mostly true, of course. Dwalin likes the way his skin looks covered in black ink, likes the way the runes on his biceps distort with every twitch of muscle – but, of course, that’s not all. After Smaug drove them from their home he had the same dream every night, over and over: he dreamt of Erebor burning, her halls blackened with soot, smoke rising eternally from the place he used to call home. The tattoos etched across his skull are a memory of that dream, a reminder of everything he’s lost, of the life he used to leave. 

He doesn’t mind Bilbo asking, but it’s something he’s never spoken about before, and he’s not about to start now. 

Bilbo’s curiosity, however is piqued. In the morning when they find a stream big enough for the whole company to give themselves a quick scrub he finds himself peering around surreptitiously, trying to clean himself while simultaneously retaining a sufficient amount of dignity. He’s not entirely sure he succeeds, but his gaze is drawn to a string of runes marked down Gloin’s arm. Bilbo frowns at them for a moment, but then Gloin’s pulling his shirt back on and Bilbo looks away. 

They’re names, not that Bilbo reads Khuzdul: the names of Gloin’s wife, and of his children. He reads them to himself every night, reminds himself why he’s doing this, why he’s taken himself so far away from those he loves more than anything else in this world. It keeps him going. 

Bilbo squints around the others, washes under his arms for the fourth time. There’s a set of key’s marked on the inside of Nori’s wrist—the first thing he ever stole, not that his brothers know that—and a stylised, angular tree above Oin’s heart—he met the woman he loved under that tree, and lost her there, too, not that _anyone_ knows that—but it’s Bofur that has Bilbo fascinated. There’s a jet-black dragon inked across his whole back, its snout pushing up the back of his neck, its tail disappearing beneath his waist band – and its eyes are a flaming gold, dark and intense. 

As they ride, Bilbo finds himself bumping along next to Bofur. He says, “I noticed your dragon.” 

“I call her Daffodil,” Bofur says lightly. “It seems appropriate.” He looks at Bilbo sideways, his eyes gleaming. “I was _very_ drunk.” – and if the dragon happens to cover up the name of the man who broke his heart, well, that’s just an added bonus. 

Daffodil isn’t the only drunken mistake, either: there’s a pork pie on Bombur’s hip that Bilbo spots a few days later which was a product of the same boozy evening in Ered Luin. Bombur doesn’t mind, to be honest—he does love a good pork pie, and the good ones are few and far between in these empty lands—but that’s not the only mark he has inked on his skin, because there’s a rune etched on the bottom of his foot, hidden from the world, and all it says is _love_. 

Bilbo only ever sees the pork pie, but that’s not his fault, and he can’t read Khuzdul numbers but he wouldn’t understand the date inscribed around Dori’s wrist, anyway. It’s the date his mother died, the date his youngest brother was born – and Ori carries her name across his collarbone, right where the bone is closest to the surface. He still dreams about the pain, sometimes, but then a dark little voice deep in his heart whispers _you deserve it, you killed her_. 

On the third day of the rain Bilbo finds himself riding beside Bifur at the back of the company. The rain deadens most all the sound, but Bifur seems to be in an oddly talkative mood, chatting away to him in Khuzdul, reins hooked loosely around his arm, hands making shapes in the air. After a while, they develop something of a rapport, even if Bilbo still doesn’t understand a word Bifur is saying – and eventually Bilbo says, “Do you have a tattoo?”

Bifur says something guttural and flowing with a tone Bilbo has come to recognise as agreement, then pulls up his left sleeve. There’s an axe marked carefully in his skin, blocky patterns following the flow of his veins – and there’s a chunk broken out of the image’s blade, inked edged jagged and sharp. Bifur mutters something grumpily, points at the shard in his head, back at the tattoo. The rain tinkles against the metal, splatters over the tattoo. 

Bilbo says, “Why?”

Bifur just shrugs, and pulls his sleeve back down.

There’s one tattoo, though, that Bilbo never finds out about no matter how hard he tries, how keenly he looks, one that’s too intimate, too private to ever see the light of day. Dwalin is the only one who knows about the tiny runes on the inside of his brother’s thigh, the runes that were inked with need and loss, with desire and an eternally unrequited love, a love that has never been voiced, never will be voiced: _thorin oakenshield_. 

Balin is an old man, now. This has been enough. 

Bilbo spends a lot of time watching Fili and Kili, because as far as he can tell there’s nothing marking their skin save scrapes, bruises and the occasional smear of mud. He scans every inch of skin that slips out from under their clothes as they are jolted by their ponies, he sneaks searching glances while they wash, he even tries to imagine what they might have: he figures either something noble or something done for a bet, and he can’t quite decide which he thinks is more likely. He gives up, eventually, mainly because it seems a little pointless to be fretting about tattoos with wargs snapping at his heels, and the matter gets tucked to the back of his mind. 

Bilbo never does complete his list, in the end. The adventure sweeps him up, and the marks inked into Dwalin’s skull are just another part of his life. They don’t matter anymore, not in the face of barrels and dragons and danger. 

Fili and Kili have never inked their skin. It’s not because they have share that peculiar hobbitish prudishness, or because they’re afraid of the pain involved – no, it goes deeper than that. Dis has the name of their mother, lost along with Erebor all those years ago, marked deeper into her palm, and it was something they saw every day, a dark stain of loss and pain. For their kin, to mark your skin is to carry a memory, and to carry it forever – and they carry their memories in each other, in every touch, every smile, every kiss. Fili sees the scar in Kili’s shoulder and remembers the day they tumbled together down the mountainside in the snow, locked around each other and screaming with laughter; Kili sees Fili’s lips curl in a mocking smile and remembers the first time they kissed in the darkness of the night with the moon hiding its face behind the clouds. 

In the end, Bilbo sees them fall, collapsed around each other in the mud and blood of battle, and he never forgets Thorin’s roar. 

Bilbo stays for Thorin’s coronation as King Under the Mountain, but then he goes home with Gandalf as his guide. He’s a different person, now, and the Sackville-Bagginses never let him forget it—something about him no longer deserving the Baggins silver: he’s fairly sure that’s where his spoons went—but sometimes he dreams about black ink on pale skin, about a dragon with golden eyes and runes he doesn’t understand, notched axes and tiny pork pies, and he wakes with a restlessness in his heart and an itch in the soles of his feet. 

He returns to the Lonely Mountain, from time to time, and sees Dwalin’s tattoos inching down his face and Gloin grinning with his young son in his arms. Thorin gives him a tired smile, says, “Welcome back.” 

Bilbo never sees Thorin’s tattoo, never sees the dark line etched down his spine, a line made up of hundreds of tiny runes, neat and precise and so small they almost look like they’re hiding. Bilbo never knows, but written down Thorin’s back is the name of everyone he ever failed, everyone he ever lost. _thror_ is first, bold and dark and angry at the nape of his neck, and _fili_ and _kili_ are last, blazoned at the base of his spine, two names twined together in ink as tightly as they ever were in life.


End file.
